The drought is getting very serious for the farmers – though we are still allowed a hose for 2 hours on odd evenings (since our number is 31) and that has kept the veg garden producing well – especially runner beans, and a couple of plants I bought as courgettes which produce full-size marrows more or less overnight at the drop of a hat. My solitary grafted ‘Super Tom’ has only done moderately though – not more than 100 tomatoes I should think compared to one round the corner which (so I hear) is 8’ high and has 600 on it!
The garden’s a bit of a mess at present because some grass clippings we carefully dug into the new vegetable bed as enrichment for the soil had grass seed in and we now have lawn where there shouldn’t be and dry grass and dandelions where there should! The first of the home-grown produce is just about ready now – carrots’ll be the first. And we’ve a whole cupboard full of apples, pears, rhubarb, tomatoes and beetroot, more beetroot and yet more beetroot!
I am starting on the huge garden. It has a great tennis court of lawn and some more grass and veg, and is spotted with stupid beds in the grass and many queer trees and bits and pieces. They were mad keen gardeners and did some pretty peculiar things to my mind. The so-called compost heaps appear to have everything but the kitchen sink embedded in them and it is all too obvious to me that enormous rose prunings and suchlike will never rot down in a thousand years, so I shall have to do a little re-organising in due course. Not to mention the odd plastic bag or bottle that seem to have got in too. But although I am rude about them they actually got things to grow in an extraordinary way and there are all sorts of twigs and bits and pieces stuck into the ground which will apparently take root in time! Except that by then I shall have probably dug them up in my ignorance. There are miles of hedges!!
The trouble is that the compost is so full of weed seeds that wherever I use it I have to go back endlessly to repair the damage! I don’t know why it should be, as I use some expensive and evil-smelling mixture supposed to contain millions of bacteria per cubic hair’s-breadth so that the compost ought to be beautifully sterile.
The lemon tree is bowed down with ripe fruit and every other stage of growth, which is a good thing as I’m down to my last pot of marmalade, the peach blossom and prunus are in flower, the buttercup and mimosa trees too, and the camellias are still flowering. Also the daphne which smells delicious, the forgetmenots and odd daffodil too, and lilies of course and masses of pink daisies that go on for months.
I’ve booked the early ferry (7.20) on 2nd Jan. (we have to report at 6.20 I’m afraid!) and the evening (6ish) on the 19th. What I reckon is that we go down to Greymouth on the 2nd via Blenheim and the inland road and stay Greymouth in a guest house B&B (get some fish and chips or something en route) – go to Lake Moeraki on the 3rd which should give us enough time to have a bit of a look at the Fox Glacier and other points of interest. There’s a motel at Lake M. that we stayed at before – bit sandfly-y but otherwise OK – and then over Haast Pass the next day and down to Cromwell. If we leave on the 18th, stay in Christchurch and come on up to Picton on the 19th.
Of course I have been frustrated by the number of shop windows which enchant X (and I fear she is equally frustrated that she doesn’t have long enough to look). We went into a big covered market near San Lorenzo this morning to buy our picnic, and that was fun to see. But the high spot was visiting San Gimignano yesterday – although fraught with misfortunes: (a) we went by train, not having enquired about the bus which was 50% cheaper – we returned that way; (b) we were late so got on without tickets and were charged nearly as much as the fare as a penalty – a minimum, our charming conductor appeared to be saying; and (c) most catastrophic of all, in the hurry I forgot my camera – I could have used a whole film on such a place. Some postcards and a sketch we did will have to suffice for the record.
The Jamaica trip sounds very exciting and I’m green with envy, and if souls can change colour I expect X would be too!
Green with envy
We are here on the Salmon River drinking our white wine and watching the locals celebrating our loss of the colonies. This is no doubt a wonderful continent – the country, the wildlife, the space – we love it. BUT, it is difficult to define why, we would never live here. Wonderful BUT.
They had double booked my seat – a large lady was ensconced in 16F. So – alas [!] they had to put me in CLUB ha ha – a window seat too – end of the saga.
Still the same as ever here – buildings have deteriorated a bit more but the people still as nice – the island still unspoiled. Grenada is off the main tourist tract – cruise ships come and go quickly so are of no real benefit. Yachts and a few private houses who rent out and a few hotels and that is about it. We are enjoying the peace.
She suggests that I go for a short coach tour in Switzerland next spring – given I can sell the house and feel less broke and more energetic, I’d rather fancy going with her.
We can put a bit of the money from the house aside in the hopes of a trip next year. Of course X wants to go via Mexico, the Russian Georgia and Crete – you know her sublime indifference to the dull facts of geography!
He has recently ‘put into the water’ a 33ft motor launch. He bought the hull and finished all the top works himself. It has a $15,000 diesel engine in it and does 27 mph. He described how he had taken it across to the Sounds for Easter, and I must say it sounded a hair-raising trip with ten foot waves and visibility down to a kilometre or two. And he has never learnt any navigation, and only had a little hand compass somewhere tucked away in a cupboard. Apparently he dug it out, screwed it to the woodwork in front of the wheel, and he had a chart from which he managed to get a rough bearing from the north entrance of the sounds to the island and in due course, there was the island in front of him. ‘Good fun,’ said he – which reminded me of the head man of the Air Force who was talking on the radio the other day, and described flying Tornado aircraft at low levels as good fun – by which I gathered that he meant good for the flow of adrenalin!
Time is moving at a rate of knots and we sink weary and sleep 8 hours plus a night (praise be) however noisy the traffic. We did Ostia yesterday and I kept a close eye on your steps – X couldn’t believe we’d covered the whole city. We were there rising 4 hours when our feet and empty tums gave out and we missed out on a lot. I was disappointed X wasn’t as enthusiastic as we were – I must have talked about it too much. It was v. sad how much of the reconstruction was crumbling again and half the gorgeous mosaics covered in sand and even being broken up by weeds – tho’ people are still working on it. One of the joys was having less tourists than in the more accessible places. We had a bottle of vino and water with us which helped on the way and went to find lunch at 3 p.m. The nearest place wouldn’t serve any more and the second was wildly expensive and all fish dishes. We had the cheapest pasta speciality which had – we think – prawns, snails and other unmentionables – but we were so hungry we enjoyed it! We ordered a carafe of wine but they only served whole bottles – the cover charge seemed wasted if we didn’t eat something else so we had a piece of the most gorgeous gateau – and left a trifle light-headed at 4 p.m.! When we got there there was an American couple at the next table who’d also got involved in a whole bottle of wine and he was a riot. He kept telling us he’d never got drunk before and giggling and she kept assuring us she’d never seen him like this – but was sweet and amused about it.
We had a rather queer meal in a takeaway place and ended up for the night in the Railway Tavern – rather surprisingly! – and all the more since there doesn’t appear to have been a railway there for decades. Their drinking habits were very orderly and quiet (and we were in the Residents’ Lounge anyway) – in fact we were more disturbed by someone who seemed to be leaving at 4 in the morning and was insisting loudly on his companion bringing the b. teapot so that it could be rinsed out. An odd conversation in the still of the night.
We had been warned that the sandflies there had been crossed with moas before the latter became extinct so we were glad that another shower absolved us from taking an evening stroll and we slept with the windows tight shut.
We’ve collected quantities of stone from various beaches (on Friday afternoon my trousers got soaked to the knees by one wave I was too busy to notice but I hung them out of the window the last 25 miles which got them nearly dry again – well, the 25 all but the 1/2 mile I needed to get them on again to face the motel office!)
Hong Kong was interesting for two days, but I’d not want to go again, we went on a 3 1/2 hour bus tour, their expensive houses on the hills overlooking the harbour were super luxurious and the usual comparative squalor down by the harbour. The remains of the disastrous tornado of 2 weeks before (of which we’d had no knowledge) had left a trail of rubble behind it, uprooted trees etc. it must have been ghastly for the people who live in boats. They seemed a very light-hearted people and happy, apart from the few aged bag of bones one saw sitting in corners, I wondered just how old they were, I fear the life must age them young, if you see what I mean.
X still talks 19 to the dozen and I think the whole town knows of her as a chatterbox – if she were anyone else’s child I’d think of her as precocious and rather revolting, but someone has to love her!
[Visitors viewng house for sale] The wife’s approach to her outdid my grandmother – on seeing X’s darkroom she told the 5 year old it would be a good place to shut up bad little girls, and when Y offered them a strawberry each she said she didn’t expect they’d eat them, they didn’t like anything that was good for them – would you believe it this day and age! She was delighted with the sitting room and sunroom, which go through the house, and said she could keep the children out of it and they could play at the end of the kitchen, the space about 9 square feet [one hopes this actually means 9 x 9 not 3 x 3!] where we normally eat. Lucky children.
Must repeat gorgeous misprint of the year – found on wrapper of local frozen chickens – ‘before serving remove the wrapper and brown the children in a moderate oven for half an hour’!
The boys are almost eating more than I do now – certainly they all do for breakfast and lunch if not dinner! At dinner they get a main course: meat, spud, and 2 veg generally, then a milk pud or similar and they’re always still hungry and usually manage a piece of bread and quarter apple afterwards! My housekeeping costs have risen 50% in the last year. I’m dreading when they’re 12, 14 and 16 – they’ll cost a bloody fortune!
X seems to cross swords with her teacher; I suspect the worthy lady sees in X’s somewhat precocious manner a reflection of her own two obnoxious little brats! Last time X complained about unfair treatment at school her mother went and ‘had it out’ with both teacher and headmaster. The upshot was that X was required to go to the front of the class and publicly apologise for lying. Charming!
If the boys all go in one room they get up at the crack of dawn and jolly well see to it no one goes on sleeping. They’ve done such ghastly things as raiding the kitchen and throwing the eggs +++ around; their mother’s put a padlock on the kitchen door, which she locks before she goes to bed.
The egg fight
X staggered in from school looking like the wreck of the Hesperus dragging his satchel and saying, ‘I’ve had a very long day’ – I know the feeling.
X at a meeting – best manners asked, ‘Can I have another pipe clean please?’ She meant pikelet!
The family went To X Last Saturday. I went on a boat and I went on The miniture train Twice and Than went to Granny’s New house and hoD Cish and chips.
This afternoon I had X’s assistance again, as she left them both with us as she was going into town for ‘The Boyfriend’. But I must say he was very good and dug away with a fork bigger than him. The only snag was when we went down to buy some wood to finish the carport fence. We went into the Mall and he suddenly advanced on a little girl (rather smaller than him) and started a punch up – but luckily she had a slightly larger sister who defended her fairly aggressively until I could remove him.
The hyperactive batty boy certainly sounds a cross – no doubt his teacher heaved a sigh of relief at the clever idea of unloading him on you, even if only for half an hour a week.
[Drawing received with letter written on it.] This is about Beatrix potter and It’s a FiLm and we are having a Nice haiday love X. and we went to Y love from X
I have thought of coming to England next year, but am beginning to wonder if I really have the strength. It’s not the actual flights, it’s the awful airport nonsense, and getting to the airports from here.
It was a bit off-putting at the hotel too – notices about double locking your door at night and putting the chain on and a security guard on each floor. We left there at 6.30 p.m. yesterday and stayed in the plane right through to here, stopping to fuel at New Delhi but not allowed off and arrived 5.30 a.m. and had in fact been flying 17ish hours. Vast Air Italia, 400 passengers – full. The staff couldn’t have been less interested – unlike the other lines – and the last straw in small mindedness they showed the Return of the Pink Panther but we hadn’t enough change again – I only saw one man who’d paid up $2.50 and got the headphones for sound. It looked utter rubbish in the odd moments I woke up so I didn’t mind.
We have just had a traumatic lunch. X gave me a new stove and dry/solid fuel and we were all set with picnic bits for lunches, tea, coffee etc. We started by buying cheese which turned out to be Roquefort and 250g and cost equivalent to £1 which shook us (and reminded me of the 3/6d banana!) so we only bought rolls to go with it- as we go to Crete on Monday and just can’t have butter running around, and then started up the stove which gave more heat under than on top and looked as tho’ it was going to catch the wallpaper – awful moment as we got it all onto the balcony – with soot all over the marble and my clean white shirt. However after washing the balcony and removing – I hope – all signs of our efforts we did better at the 2nd attempt and hope we’ve got it taped!
Soot on the balcony
We came on the weekend when 40,000 Alpini were expected for their annual blessing by the Pope. It gave a festive and noisy (or noisier) air to Rome – every time you moved you got one of their foot long feathers in their green hats in your eye. We’re setting forth to ‘do’ the Vatican today. We’ve got into a pensione (Select Hotel my foot!) with an elusive plumbing system. We have archaic shower in room and bidet with occasional cold water – and loo and bathroom on landing. I asked if I could have a bath any time and the proprietor say. ‘Why not?’ Now I know why not – there’s no plug and no hot water!! but it’s clean and pleasant and only 5 minutes from the termini.
What is this ‘ball lightning’ which been providing you with amusement? I don’t remember hearing of it and suspect the little green men, or the Russians (playing a double bluff on themselves)! As also with the Challenger-launched satellite which is (according to our radio) either in pieces, or following in orbit on their tail where they can’t get at it.
It sounds as though X’s having quite a time over there – I hope she gets back in one piece. Did she tell you that when she left, she left her hand-luggage at checkout, a glove on the ground, arrived after boarding-call, and didn’t know which plane she was supposed to be on!
[The continuing saga of the ‘piranha’ grubs.] We were bemoaning our purina bugs to X after church, and she said they are having a terrible time with them. According to her they always move north and each moth produces 10,000 eggs. If the farmer to your south doesn’t do anything one year you have a time the next. Their neighbour didn’t care last year! Their son dug a hole for a tree for her, and out of a square foot (compared to the normal disaster rate of 4 grubs) he found 39! I’m glad we don’t lie north of them! – though they have been trying to combat them and have had a helicopter spraying their fields.
The 39 grubs…
[and more] Did I tell you the folk remedy for our grass grubs was ‘mobbin’. You put lots of animals on a small area and they crush the eggs 12″ under ground – as we explained you can’t do much in this line with 10 ewes and 6 lambs. I don’t think even adding 6 hens would help! Anyway the season’s come for the moths to fly, so at least we won’t have them again. We have found lots of dead ones so X’s efforts haven’t been wasted.
We had plenty of other jobs including a satisfactory start on clearance and burning of two horrid creeper bushes which infest some of the trees in our lower field and on the river bank. One is a fierce form of thorn called Barberry, and the other a true creeper covered leaf and branch with pernicious little hooks – it goes by the sardonic name of ‘lawyer bush’ since it never lets you go once it has got hold of you.
The garden deserves more of my time – the flowers are gorgeous. I do enjoy them so much. The freesias are coming out apace now and the mimosa’s in flower but I keep clear of that as it gives you pink eye (at least that’s what my ma told me).
The real clear up in the garden isn’t quite due but as a preliminary I covered the lawn as best I could with one of those hormone weed killers – which I can’t say I really approve of because it makes the weeds look as though they are writhing in agony and it’s difficult to feel really convinced that it is in ecstasy of living a pace they’ve never lived before which their contortions are expressing.
I started language school this week. There’s one other English girl there and a couple of other English-speakers. A French girl who taught English, married to a German and with whom she speaks English as he doesn’t speak French! And a 1/2 American 1/2 French man. A host of other French people, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, Korean and so forth – really mixed! The teacher is quite good though you have to keep a dictionary near as it’s all too easy to misunderstand her explanations as they are also in German and our vocab. doesn’t stretch to exactitudes!
It’s very humiliating to read a story to a 3 year old and have him correct your pronunciation!
I’ve finished my Great Painters and started an evening course at the university called The Problems of Art. Quite different approach by younger man of more conservative type – promises to be interesting but I find it a bind having to drive into town after dinner.
This evening we were practising using the WAIS [Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)] – not seriously enough on my part I’m afraid. It’s terrible in that lab (Psych) cos I’m always laughing or late or both. I sit with the wrong people. Next week I’m going to be serious because the woman who takes us must be getting fed up with me.
For Human Learning we have to train a rat to bar press. Our rat was perfectly friendly at first but the noise the water machine made scared him no end and he huddled in a corner for an hour and a half despite all sorts of soothing noises, stroking etc. etc. Poor little thing – it makes you feel so mean – a jolly nuisance from our point of view tho’!
The rat
She is staying with us until Friday. Most of the morning we have been tidying up my vegetable patch – and she knows the names of all the weeds in Latin, it seems, having taken an agricultural degree at Reading, around the end of the war – the first one.
I am relieved to learn from today’s letter that your acrobatics and singing class are separate classes, I thought you were outdoing the Black & White Minstrels; I was completely disillusioned when I found they didn’t actually do both at the same time! Incidentally, how did they manage when they gave live performances? I felt quite exhausted at the thought of going on to Scottish dancing after acrobatics, you must be bonkers! From my vast size it would be just the thing for me. But nearer to hand, perhaps helping X dig up the concrete drains each side of the drive with a pickaxe would be more constructive!
So one day was spent acquiring comprehensive but simple literature from the library and visiting the climatologist at the meteorology office – I hope by a combination of sagacious nodding and a show of vagueness I managed to disguise the fact that I didn’t have the faintest idea what was the function of a net pyrradiometer or couldn’t consistently distinguish between a wet bulb thermometer and an isobar! The other day was spent plumbing the depths of the mines department to try and find out if the department had to obtain a mining licence in order to prevent anyone else collaring a hunk of oil we want to quarry for processing as a cement substitute.
X is now embarking upon making a sort of sand-yacht using 3 secondhand skateboards for wheels and two broomsticks for a mast – said like that it rather sounds as if he’ll look like a cross between a witch and Tarzan in full flight!
I’m enjoying the Scottish dancing though at present feel much more inept than on the first night! The more you realise that you’re doing things wrongly, the more discouraging it is! However, we have about half an hour actual lesson for the new ones now so with any luck things may improve. Unfortunately I’ve found so far that one can do brilliant skip changes, setting reels etc. when practising but go completely to pieces when you have work out where to go as well!
Having bought a half gallon of resin at vast cost I tried to encapsulate my pumice head as no one has found a way to preserve pumice. What to do it in was the first difficulty, then I decided the best thing we had to hand was a sherry flagon. I got it standing on its neck end straight, and filled it to the shoulder with resin. (Having first tied pieces of string soaked in petrol round the base, set it alight and then plunged into cold water, and broke it off – a little alarming!) When dry I waxed this and the rest of the flagon, suspended the head upsidedown inside and started pouring the catalysed resin down the side; it said you shouldn’t pour more than quarter of a inch at once as the heat builds up and could crack it. I began very carefully, keeping the next lot of resin on ice to slow down gelling, but the afternoon drew on and I got more and more reckless until the thing gave off enormous heat – and yes, they were right, it cracked all over! and bang went my head and about $8 worth of resin! The little paper weight I tried with seed heads inbetween times worked like a dream, of course.
Our recorder group seems to be falling to pieces which is sad… Of course there was also X, who was so earnest, and used to organise little concerts for us with various groups of captive audience like pensioners which we hated – but she gave us up a couple of years ago now, and I can’t say that we were sorry, ingrates that we are! Our trouble is that none of us find time to practise regularly, so we never get any better, which must be very dull for real musicians.
Last Friday we all set off for X for our jolly bridge tournament; at present we’re saying never again. We excelled ourselves by coming bottom, very shaming. It was totally exhausting. We played from 1.30 on Saturday to 5.30 p.m., off to find our dinner, back at 7.30 and play until nearly 11 p.m. Back at 9.30 a.m. Sunday and play until 1 p.m. Then a light meal laid on by their super club (cost quarter of a million) whilst we waited for the results. (Wish we hadn’t!) Half way through Sunday morning I was so tired I could hardly follow suit yet alone be cunning.
It’s really very maddening, X is trying watercolour landscapes too, and he’s really so much better than I am, without really trying! … [Next day] When we got back after a cuppa we went back to finish yesterday’s painting; of course all colours had changed; X’s was super anyway and mine is a mess, bah! I beat him two days running at Scrabble tho’!
I do find dressmaking so much more relaxing than painting etc. as I don’t have to think so much, but now I really have no more excuses and must be creative or just admit I haven’t got what it takes, which I have a sneaking suspicion is the case!
It really does surprise me how many of my acquaintance here appear to spend all their time playing golf, bowls or croquet by day, and bridge by night. Maybe they do do all sorts of useful things in between – and come to think of it I suppose it’s not really any more constructive to spend my time growing vegetables to eat and cutting up wood to burn.
In between times I’ve bought a fibreglass boat! 9’3” long – it’s still in the shop while I chase a trailer which I hope to have by Friday. It looks a sweetie and is (provisionally) to be called Giggle.
X is having a nasty time trying to work out the bridge scores from last night, someone must have made a wrong move and some couples played the same hand 3 times without noticing it! We had a phantom twice and others didn’t have one at all, what the computer will make of the results I hate to think!
I’ve bought 32 ounces of natural wool to make X another Aran jacket, she’s worn hers almost nonstop for 5 years, and it’s beginning to look like it, I’ve lost all my lovely nails I grew on our holiday, usually not having something to do with my hands in the evening, so I hope this will be therapeutic as well as cover X. [The nails haven’t got mislaid but nibbled off…]
Trains are not what they were. When I think of the breakfast I used to get around 1947 which lasted all the way from Waterloo to Basingstoke where I used to go to audit a steam-roller manufacturer’s business! And some notes I am putting into publishable shape have a description of the restaurant car on the mainline here around 1910. In those days the manager of the car did his own buying at the various stops – trout, whitebait, lamb, strawberries etc. according to season. There were various places where the suppliers used to wait in which case the train was stopped for the bargains to be completed! Nowadays one has to rush out to the refreshment room at the halfway stop to acquire tepid tea in plastic cups and equally tepid and plastic sandwiches.
Trackside goodies
Hope you remembered all your lunch when you went to Whipsnade, unlike your 21st! What a change from 4 shillings to £2.50. [And in 2019 quoted at £21.30!]
I went into the local garage who kindly lent me their hydraulic jack which saved a great deal of fiddling about, and winding, to get the offending wheel off the ground. I couldn’t see anything wrong with the shock absorbers, but the new bearing I had fitted a month or two ago seemed distinctly loose, and the man adjusted it for me in about two minutes flat with his clever cruciform spanner for the wheel nuts, and his special pliers for pulling off the cover to the bearing. Would have taken me all of half an hour. But it didn’t cure the rattle! However, the next service is coming up, so I shall have the shock absorbers given a special examination. I remember reading not long ago that they aren’t made to last more than 40,000 or so (which surprised me as they are the sort of thing one expects to last as long as the car).
Your bike sounds super – it brought back memories of my biking in those parts in the war – I can remember my delight as I struggled up the Finchley Road if the admiral passed me in his large car and pushed his bosun out to ride my bike up and gave me a lift. We were in the big block of flats at the top of the hill and the wrennery was in the enormous nurses’ hostel.
She really is a most surprising and individual dog – much too friendly, normally, as a guard dog though occasionally she produces menacing barks and growls. Every now and then she suddenly goes haywire and rushes about, often going off about fifty yards and then coming charging back straight at you. If she actually hit one at top speed she would certainly knock one over and probably break your leg as well, as she is about 10 inches across the chest and weighs 3.5 stone. Other times she dances around off all four paws at once and she has a remarkable heavy breathing act. But in another mood nothing will do but to snuggle up and lay her head on whatever portion of ones anatomy is available – however uncomfortable that leaves the rest of her!
Dancing off all four paws
There is a dog of ancient vintage, which I don’t think will last long but it doesn’t worry me as much as the thing the previous girl brought. It was a mad mongrel that barked and jumped up at everybody. So it was not with any sorrow that I said goodbye to that particular animal!
About two weeks ago she went up the hill with X and started racing down and rolled over dead – heart attack. Too sad – we miss her and in fact chose the place we’re going to to be near walking country. However, no doubt we’ll be more tempted to walk if it doesn’t mean going the same way always or take the car. We’ll wait and see how we feel when we’re settled before thinking of another.
Our beautiful Irish setter ran away one day and never came back. Either someone stole her, or she may have been shot for running deer. Either is equally possible. It hurt a lot to lose her, even though setters traditionally have a roaming tendency, and she had slipped off enough times for us to know that one day it would be for good.
We had to let the old dog be put to sleep and we got a 4 year old boxer, quite small, from animal welfare. It has been an exhausting 3 days as we have no gate and 400 metres of only barbed wire fence. But she is settling down and stays close to us. We can shut her in the little back yard when we both go out – only for church mostly.
Last year I entered a competition to name one of Henny Penny’s little chicks. I was lucky enough to win one. Eggburt was delivered three weeks ago.
We had a pleasant evening last Sunday at the Cathedral when they were saying goodbye to X. I can’t say I got anything out of his sermon any more than the four years I heard him every week! – but it was nice to see so many old friends.
I asked the boys what they’d give up for Lent the other day and after much debate one said he’d give up getting cross so I said, ‘Are you sure, that sounds like hard work’. Whereupon the other one said, ‘That’s a good idea, I’ll give up hard work’!
I’ve just had my grandfather’s Bible rebound. I got it in two halves from two aunts. Inside it is inscribed ‘Presented to X on his 25th Birthday from his Father-in-Law with a request that the Contents may often be perused, with a Spiritual Blessing resulting thereby’.
It’s a sort of inter-denominational monthly do… the meeting over – ran for thirty five minutes – mostly a man with a fantastic gift of the gab, but some queer ideas, I thought, talking on a passage of what sounded like Habbakuk – and then his wife (50 if a day) got up to croon one of these gospel songs, which she did three times over in a voice of warm treacle – really revolting, after which they got everyone to sing it with her still leading, about fifteen times, interspersed with ‘altar calls’ (if you know what they are) and exhortations to go to another meeting on Sunday afternoon etc.
Another of our ewe-lambs went off and got dipped last Sunday with the Pentecostalists – full of joy and quite unrepentant for not having consulted his clergy first. Very trying, these individualists!
Last week we had our own pet visiting preacher. He has turned out to be an admirable speaker, thank the Lord, and in spite of my well-known propensity for sleeping when other clergymen talk, I have listened to him every day and twice most days without once dropping off! Perhaps it helps that by and large I agree with him on almost every subject he has talked about.
We spent nearly all our time shopping apart from a 4 hour trip round Hong Kong Island – and a service on Sunday morning which I walked to and found a church which was almost a duplicate of a Victorian one just off Queens Road in Weybridge – so Anglican and so completely un-Asian that it was too pathetic to be funny.
We get little snatches of news about the row going on in UK over the ordination of women, the latest of which is the ex Bishop of London’s threat to lead a party of priests to join the Roman church; or to form a new C of E under the Pope – I’m not quite sure which. I think he must be crazy: I have a book of his from which I guess that no way could he accept the sort of intellectual discipline that Rome exerts.
[Poor attendance] seems to have been afflicting the House Group I go to on Thursday evenings. Maybe it has just been the very long and beastly winter which we are emerging from, but quite often the group only produces about five people although in theory we have a membership of about fifteen. Personally I think it is also because we don’t have a sufficiently worthwhile programme, and waste a lot of time drinking tea, not having met until 7.15 p.m. so we don’t actually start doing anything until about 8.30 apart from chatting. And when we do start, our capacity for chasing red herrings is quite something, so we never, but never actually get through any programme – and often take three weeks to cover what other groups apparently cover in one session. However, as long as they enjoy it – !
Filed words 